Abbas meets French President Macron on sidelines of annual UN summit
PA leader tells French president that Paris plays a key role in supporting the Palestinian cause; he also sits down with Bahraini foreign minister
Adam Rasgon is a former Palestinian affairs reporter at The Times of Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday on the margins of the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York and told him that Paris plays a key role in supporting the Palestinian cause, the official PA news site Wafa reported.
Abbas arrived in New York on Saturday and he is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
“His excellency affirmed the importance of the role France plays on all levels in backing the Palestinian cause,” the Wafa report stated, referring to the PA president.
Macron has advocated for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his government recently criticized a pledge made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month to annex significant parts of the West Bank, if he is able to form a coalition in the coming weeks.
Abbas and Macron were joined by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and a number of Palestinian officials including top Palestine Liberation Organization official Saeb Erekat, PA Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Abu Amr, PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki and others.
Abbas and Macron last held a bilateral meeting in September 2018 when the two leaders met in Paris.
Following that meeting, Abbas told reporters that France was increasingly studying the possibility of recognizing a Palestinian state.
“The French certainly care a lot about that issue,” Abbas said at the time. “They are studying it more and more.”
More than 135 countries have recognized a Palestinian state, but some of the international community’s most influential members, including France, the US and the UK, have not made such a move.
Abbas has argued greater international recognition of a Palestinian state would encourage Palestinians to maintain hope for peace.
In contrast, Israel maintains that recognizing a Palestinian state will harden the Ramallah based Palestinian leadership’s negotiating positions, making it more difficult to reach a final peace agreement.
Abbas also met Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa on Tuesday in New York City.
In late June, Bahrain hosted an American-led workshop which focused on the economic portion of the US administration’s long-awaited proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Palestinian leadership fiercely opposed the conference in the Bahraini capital.
The Palestine Liberation Organization specifically asserted that the conference’s economic focus sought to undermine its aspirations for statehood. It also accused the US of attempting to use the gathering to normalize Israel’s status in the Arab world.
While no Israeli officials attended the summit in Manama, a number of Israeli businessmen and journalists did so.
